As the market value of new car-making forces continues to rise, technology giants have "cross-border" car-making, and smart cars are becoming more and more popular with capital. Evergrande, which is engaged in real estate, Xiaomi, which makes mobile phones, and Baidu, and many other leading enterprises in the industry have also joined the ranks of car-making across borders, refreshing the cognition of netizens again and again. As a result, when the two-wheeled electric vehicle leader brand Maverick began to enter the new energy vehicle market, everyone was already strange.
Last year, The Maverick officially announced on its social account that the Maverick electric type stepped into the field of electric four-wheelers - Niu Innovative Energy Technology NIUTRON (Chinese name: Self-Touring Car). The brand is another venture of Li Yinan, the founder of Xiaoniu Electric, focusing on the field of intelligent high-end new energy vehicles.
At that time, it was just the release of the name of the new brand and some exterior pictures of the new car.
But unexpectedly, just 3 months later, NIUTRON's first early engineering test car, the Youjia NV, has been off the production line.
Let's list the time points, you can feel the progress of this brand of car:
Changzhou Niuchuang Technology Co., Ltd., established on October 27, 2020;
NIUTRON (Chinese name: Ziyoujia Automobile) brand exposure on December 15, 2021;
On February 28, 2022, its first product made its debut since Youjia NV.
Then again, from two-wheeled electric vehicles to four-wheeled electric vehicles, where is Li Yinan's car-making base? I think this is due to the trend of the times, after all, car building is no longer the "unique work" of traditional OEMs, like Li Xiang's ideal, Li Bin's Weilai, He Xiaopeng's Xiaopeng, can it be sold?
So, what is the strength of the self-touring NV? Let's take a look:
According to the official statement, the Self-Touring Home NV is positioned in the pure electric city off-road big five-seat hardcore SUV, which is a new energy SUV that can meet daily commuting and has outdoor exploration temperament.
In terms of appearance, at the first glance of the NV, perhaps everyone will involuntarily think of a luxury brand - Land Rover in their minds, because its entire front is relatively rounded, and it also uses a structural personality headlight shape. It is no exaggeration to say that installing a set of grilles for the NV of the self-touring home and changing the Land Rover logo should not be doubted by anyone.
You can't say that he doesn't have his own characteristics, but the design of the whole vehicle doesn't seem to be mature enough, a lot of details will make people feel a little weird, the huge round lights at the front of the car are just daytime lights, and the two small lights that feel like turn signals next to it are high beams and low beams.
From the side, the boxy body is matched with an upward waist line, perhaps to create some dynamic elements, but the overall is not coordinated enough. The front part of the car is obviously visible that there is a decline, perhaps for the front of the car, the front of the car is not too large, but this also causes a problem, the driver can not see the four corners of the front of the car, easy to cause the distance of the misjudgment, of course, the current camera radar is rich enough to give a reminder, but ask which old driver is used to relying on these.
In terms of size, the car is 4915mm long, 1962mm wide, 1745mm high, and has a wheelbase of 2910mm. In contrast, the length and wheelbase are slightly less than the ideal ONE. Because the self-touring NV adopts a large five-seat design, not only does the rear space look good, the trunk is also very spacious, and the volume under normal conditions reaches 788L, and a lot of things can be put in addition to putting a stroller.
The interior style of the NV is still quite similar to the early Tesla, the minimalist digital style, and even the small air conditioner outlet is similar. Under the large area of leather and chrome plating process, the overall texture is still good, and it has to be said that Chinese brands are now in line with luxury cars in terms of materials, which makes the interior of the joint venture brand look "cheap".
Now the self-touring NV displayed are all test cars, can not experience the specific performance of the car system, the central control screen built-in 6 linear micro motion motors for the realization of RealTouch haptic feedback, which is not bad. In addition, Ziyoujia also deeply understands the concern of car owners and passengers for mobile phones, not only providing two wireless charging bits, but also providing multiple fast charging interfaces for the front and rear rows.
In terms of seats, it is said that the Nappa leather wrapping and embroidery suspension technology are used, which looks like a large and comfortable style. The co-pilot also adopts a design similar to Weilai's "Queen Co-driver", the backrest angle can be lowered to 130 degrees, and with a removable glove box, after disassembly, the leg rest can be adjusted to full flatness, if you can add a massage function is even more praiseworthy.
As for power and endurance, there is not much news at present, only that the new car is based on the Gemini twin power module system, using a modular design concept, will provide pure electric and extended range two power systems, and the whole series is equipped with intelligent electric four-wheel drive, 0-100km/h acceleration time is 5.9 seconds, other information has not yet been revealed.
Although it was only officially announced in December last year, the preparation time of the maverick is not short, and last year it also "took over" the Mahayana automobile factory to prepare for production, but as we all know, car manufacturing is a money-burning industry, according to the third quarter of the 2021 fiscal year of maverick electric (cumulative) The net profit attributable to the common shareholders of the parent company is 178 million yuan, while the current market value of Maverick Electric is 904 million US dollars, about 5.7 billion yuan, and the founder Li Yinan's personal value is about 1 billion US dollars, which is not low, but it is a drop in the bucket for car building.
The main body of new energy vehicles, "Jiangsu Niu Innovative Energy Technology Co., Ltd.", has obtained 500 million US dollars of investment from IDG, COATUE, Meihua Venture Capital and other institutions, with Li Yinan's background, as well as its investment circle resources, niu innovation energy financing may not be too difficult, but it is also difficult to say that it is "rich and powerful".
As for talents, the current team size of Youjia Auto has grown to nearly 1,000 people, and every day "new people are entering the group", and the personnel are mainly distributed in Beijing, Shanghai and Changzhou. Among them, Ziyoujia has acquired the Changzhou plant of Mahayana Automobile, with a design capacity of 180,000 units per year, and officially put into use in March this year. This is also the key to the rapid scaling of self-travelers.
Previously, Li Yinan said in an interview that automatic driving is a revolutionary technology, but it also takes a long time to evolve, and it must be based on improving user experience and absolute safety. At this stage, lidar is not suitable for NIUTRON's new car. Although the "Maverick" has made certain preparations, but there are still multiple problems such as production qualifications and car-making technology that need to be solved urgently, from the establishment of the project to the trial installation of test vehicles, only more than three years, destined to be built in the "Lego" way, which is the same as Weilai and the ideal early days, but people have begun to build 2.0 cars, since the Youjia NV can cut how much cake in the new energy market, it is not easy to say. As for the performance of the vehicle in the later stage, it is still necessary to let the user speak.